She was über excited, and I was just thrilled that two years after her gluten, egg and dairy allergy diagnosis that we could host a birthday party with food that actually looked and tasted “normal,” where the guests probably wouldn’t have even guessed the ingredients weren’t typical if we had not told them!

Here’s what we did for the party!

The Cake

A few months ago I finally perfected a gluten, egg, and dairy-free cakethat actually tastes like the real thing and does not crumble into pieces as soon as I take it out of the oven! (The cake is actually also nut, corn, soy and refined sugar free!)

In the past we have either purchased specialty, allergy-free cupcakes from Sweet Cakes or Gluten-Free Mimi, and last year I made a brownie cake.

But this year, I really just wanted to be the MOM. No, not all moms have to bake and decorate their children’s birthday cakes, but this was important to me.

I had purchased a cake decorating kit when Little Girl was a year old. In fact, some friends helped me decorate a huge, 4-tiered, 8-layer cake for her birthday that year! I thought I may never use that cake decorating kit again, and it was so much fun to do so!

As another compromise, I decorated the cake with Skittles, since I am not the best cake decorator (or decorator in general!). Yes, these did have yucky food dyes in them, but we left it up to the parents whether or not they let their kids eat them.

Lastly, I made mini cupcakes for the children to eat. I used the India Tree food colorings to mix up red, orange and yellow icing for a mini rainbow and left the rest of the icing white to make clouds at the end of the rainbow that I arranged to go above the cake on the table!

I decided to make simple rainbow-colored fruit kabobs. These matched the rainbow on the cake, and the rainbow mane on Little Girl’s favorite pony.

It was easy to find fruit to match every color of the rainbow at Aldi. I used strawberries for red, cantaloupe for orange, pineapple for yellow, honeydew for green, and blueberries for blue!

We hosted nearly 30 children plus their parents, and it cost me less than $15 to make enough fruit kabobs to feed everyone!

We do not normally keep juice in our home, but for the party, I purchased 100 percent fruit juice boxes for the kids from Aldi and served bottled water to the parents.

The Games

We wanted to include plenty of activities in this year’s party as turning 5 is a milestone birthday. It wasn’t hard to come up with ideas that matched our My Little Pony theme:

Cutie Mark Face Painting

I am not an artist (if you couldn’t tell from the cake!). I’m just not. But I thought it might be fun to try painting “cutie marks” (the little symbols the ponies have on them) on the kids’ faces. They loved it! We had so many kids lined up for face painting that one of the other moms volunteered to help me paint!

Pin the Cutie Mark on the Pony

This game was a spin on the traditional Pin the Tail on the Pony party game. My husband is a teacher, so he took some poster board to his classroom and projected Little Girl’s favorite pony on his board to trace. He then colored it in. (Isn’t he a great daddy?!)

Instead of pinning the tail on the pony, we printed out mini rainbow cutie marks. We blindfolded thekids, and they pinned the cutie marks on the pony!

Rainbow Dash Piñata

We have always enjoyed incorporating piñatas into our birthday celebrations. My husband is a Spanish teacher, and he and I met while both serving as missionaries in Costa Rica. We’re a redheaded family, but we’re Latino at heart!

Hubby (or his students) has made our piñatas in the past, but this year we got one from an Etsy shop. We just love supporting other work-at-home moms!

Pony Rides

What My Little Pony party is complete without pony rides?! Actually, it would have been just fine without them, but my parents are good friends with a man who owns some Shetland ponies. He brought the pony for the kids to enjoy. That pony was the life of the party!

The Gifts

Our little girls have been so blessed with both toys and clothes from all of our extended family and hand-me-downs from friends. They really lack for nothing!

We did purchase a caterpillar kit, magnifying glass and binoculars for Little Girl because she is at a great age for scientific discovery, and she loves exploring nature, but we did not have her open any gifts in front of the other children.

And we asked that our guests not bring gifts. We want to use her birthday to teach her to give back to others. So, instead, we asked that guests bring food items for our local food pantry if they didn’t want to come empty-handed.

We were so excited to take Little Girl to the soup kitchen to give back to others! And since we’ve started this tradition early in her childhood, she doesn’t feel like she is “missing out” on gifts from her friends.

We also take any money given to her from grandparents, etc. and put it into a college savings account.

All-in-all, we had a wonderful time celebrating the 5th birthday of the first little girl God gave us! It was fun to see that we were able to host an enjoyable birthday party even with food allergies!

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Grace-Filled,Healthy Homemaking

I’m Erin. Follower of Jesus. Wife to Will. Mommy to a lovely trio of redheaded girls and one sweet baby boy. Professional dreamer. Drinker of chai tea and peppermint mochas. Recovering overwhelmed homemaker. I’m here to encourage, educate, and empower you to live a grace-filled, natural life. Won’t you join me?